


a meeting over tea

by tourmei



Series: threads [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Like Really Really Squint, Multi, Spies & Secret Agents, asian steampunk world if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:48:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25180399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tourmei/pseuds/tourmei
Summary: Lyca Ilvory, star agent of the Aera organization, meets her mother.
Series: threads [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824226





	a meeting over tea

Lyca rapped on the door.

The sound resonated on the rusty metal like a the clash of a gong. Lyca's heart was pounding but she resisted peering through the metal cutouts in the door. She had seen the old rickety house and the whole old rickety neighborhood from the train station on the 54th-floor hill, and she wasn't going to make eye contact with this woman before it was due.

Plastic slippers scraped on concrete, and the door opened. The woman was more lively than she had anticipated for someone who was on file as 42 years old. Healthy brown hair, a face bare of wrinkles. The woman's poised posture might have suggested she was visiting an opera house in the city center rather than standing in the slums, greeting a mistake she had made 20 years ago.

But again, thought Lyca, this woman could not live in the slums for lack of choice.

"Come in," said the woman, business-like.

Inside, Lyca watched the shadows pass on the crooked window shutters. She looked for something familiar in the woman's face—in the way her nose sloped downward or the the way she pressed her thin lips in a line. She found nothing.

After remarking on the weather, Lyca watched the woman set her tea down on the peeling wood table and said, "You know why I'm here."

"Yes," said the woman.

When the woman reached for the tea kettle and did not continue, Lyca placed a hand on it. "Do you know why I'm here?"

The woman stilled, but did not say anything.

"I know Meara is my sister," said Lyca, more forcefully. Softness, she knew would not help. "Tell me how you sent her to the R.E.V."

The woman sighed. "I didn't send her to the R.E.V."

Lyca stared her in the eye. "Don't act stupid. The Aeras have had the R.E.V. Athicae files for months. There's no use lying about your old position. Especially no use to me."

"How old are you?" said the woman, a curious glint in her eye.

Lyca stiffened. A kitchen appliance buzzed over the honking of cars outside. There was no way the woman did not already know. "Nineteen."

"Then you're in your prime." The woman pursed her lips. "Class A?"

"S."

"Not bad.”

Lyca frowned. "You can't expect me to believe that you, a retired high-ranking agent, did nothing to push your daughter into the R.E.V. No one rises through the ranks that fast without connections. Even if you tried to push her away from it at the start, you must've approved her at some point."

The woman set down the tea. "I left."

"Yes," said Lyca, because this was obvious.

"But I didn't retire," said the woman. "I was terminated. Spring of 184, malicious incompetence."

She recovered fast. "So you sent your daughter to the R.E.V. to live out the rest of the dream that you couldn't have."

"I didn't send her to the R.E.V. any more than I sent you." The woman looked into the tea. "She found her own way in."

"She must have known you were a part of it," grit Lyca.

"She doesn't know who I am," said the woman. "She doesn't know I'm her mother."

Lyca's grip tightened on her bag. "Explain."

The woman placed down her tea. "It was hard," she said, "being a mother and an agent at once. You're nineteen—still in school, I presume. When I was in school, I thought it couldn't get harder than that—those horrible times getting back from missions in the middle of the night and having to pore over books instead of sleep. I bet you don't sleep." She chuckled to herself. "But having to care for a child... it was so much worse than that. Textbooks don’t need you. I was always away."

Lyca wished she felt a hatred for this woman bubbling up, but there was nothing but cold indifference. After ten years to face the truth—that she had come last to someone who was supposed to give her unconditional love; that another daughter had come first—she had accepted it as a symptom of human selfishness. Her supposed mother had been cold and cruel, incapable, an unfeeling entity. This encounter did not prove Lyca wrong.

"So you sent me away," said Lyca.

"I sent you away when you were born," said the woman. "I had one child already. I couldn't handle two."

First come, first serve. Lyca guessed it was fair, in the type of logic borne of a twisted mind.

"So I was always away," said the woman simply. "My in-laws were always hounding me for it, wanted to take the child themselves, said I had killed my husband and was trying to kill his daughter too. What kind of young mother's job would take whole weeks at a time to solve anyway? Meara was four," said the woman simply. "After a long mission, I went to pick her up from the in-laws. I still remember it—I was in the kitchen, the grandfather let me in. Her cousin called my sister-in-law her mom and no one corrected it. Figured it was better for everyone involved. She still thinks that's her mother."

Lyca narrowed her eyes. "You're underestimating her."

"Tell me," said the woman, pointing at the rickety dining room of the rickety house, "how could she have possibly found me?"

"I managed to," said Lyca.

The woman sighed. "You've been searching for four years."

"And she couldn't have been?"

"You've been searching since April 9, 197, from the Aera databases in uptown Canthra. I  _ let _ you find me," said the woman. "What, you think I live here without reason? I'm very hard to find."

Lyca was silent at that.

"I did lie though," said the woman. "I didn't just leave her after a long mission."

_ You didn't want to deal with her either,  _ thought Lyca.

"It wasn't just any mission," said the woman instead. "It was after Duna Isles, March 184. The mission where I got terminated."

"You were a mess," said Lyca.

"No. I was only a mess after. Do you know what was meant by malicious incompetence?"

She could guess.

"It's the R.E.V.'s code for treason," said the woman. "I was terminated for treason. Lost everything."

_ Then you might have loved Meara after all _ , remarked Lyca.

"Are you not going to ask why I was terminated for treason?" asked the woman.

She blinked. "Since you're intent on sharing it anyway, no."

The woman sat back in her chair, satisfied. "I was an Aera mole."

Lyca’s instinct reject the idea immediately. This sad, manipulative woman could never have fought for anything good. The Aeras were a path Lyca had carved for herself. She would never and had never followed in this woman's footsteps. If she ever did, perhaps she should be put out of her misery.

"I know what you're thinking. It won't be in the databases. Ask Eida."

Her hand loosened over the bag strap.

"This is all you need to know," said the woman. "Unless you needed more?"

Lyca's eyes narrow. "I don't trust you've told me the truth."

"Do you think I've finally called you here just to lie?" said the woman. She rubbed at a black circle under her eye. "I cut contact from both organizations years ago. It's another life. If you think I have something to gain by lying, you’re free to believe so. But the only reason I allowed you here, if you still haven’t managed to figure it out, is because all of  _ that _ is another life to me, but it is currently—and, may I add, stupidly—your whole life to you," said the woman finally, and stood, and extended a hand over the tea on the peeling wood table. “You’ll leave one day.”

Lyca did not shake the woman’s hand, but she looked at it. It was wrinkled and blue under the sparse light, nothing like the woman’s youthful face. And nothing like the last of Lyca’s  _ pre-memories _ , as she called them: a marshmallow on an outdoor fire, a warm pressure on her back, and a barely older girl laughing in the distance. When Lyca looked at her hand, the cold, unfeeling truths about this woman that she had built for herself in the last ten years didn't crumble. They held, and settled into the back of her mind with a heavier weight than before.

Lyca found herself on the other side of the rusty steel door with a bag of flour in hand.

"Tell me if you want anything else," said the woman. Her smile didn't reach her eyes.

When Lyca passed the street again, several weeks later, the rusty door was painted a new bright blue, and the rickety old house was gone.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! this is a writing prompt practice with one of my minor characters (lyca) from a long-term writing project. i'm in the process of revamping said project, so if the world feels quite hollow, that's because this was my first exploration into it.
> 
> this was way out of my comfort zone. i have no idea what i'm doing (but i guess that's a good thing).
> 
> if you found this interesting, i'll be writing other oneshots in this series -- same cast of characters, different world & premise each time. let me know what you think! 
> 
> on tumblr @tourmei


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